Thursday, May 22, 2014

Carrie
Butler, who often gives helpful advice to writers on her blog, posed an
interesting challenge: write a letter to a younger version of yourself, when
you first started writing.

Dear
self:

Right
now, you’re writing as a way to relieve the frustrations and disappointments in
life. Keep at it. One day you’ll finish the novel you’re writing. After that,
you’ll realize you need to get past that and go on to write other short stories
and novels. It’s not that what you’re writing right now is so horrible. It’s
that you’ll grow so much in this skill, you won’t have trouble leaving it
behind to go on to greater things.

Keep
on reading and watching what you love: science fiction and fantasy. You’ll read
The Lord of the Rings again someday,
believe it or not. Make sure to watch the reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation. (I know, it’s still playing, but
keep an eye out for reruns.) When the SciFi channel shows their version of the really weird movie Dune, watch it and note the phrase, “The sleeper must awaken.” That is what will
happen to your life.

You
will become the person you never imagined you would be: the one who goes to
conventions and conferences and pitches your manuscript to professionals. Watch
out for females who seem to have a sexual attraction to you. This is not ego;
this is a lifestyle among people who travel frequently, and it is a snare to
avoid.

Do
not be offended at the lack of capitalization after colons or the single spaces
after periods in this letter. Fads come and go, even in capitalization and punctuation. This,
perhaps more than anything else, is evidence that this letter is from the
future. No investment or job advice is included, since that would alter the
timeline.

Mark

Mark
Murata

http://suburbanfantasy.blogspot.com/

“I
give permission for my entry to be included in the e-book compilation without
royalties and/or separate compensation.”

Saturday, May 17, 2014

I
saw the new Godzilla movie. He gets along so swimmingly, it could
be subtitled, Godzilla Joins the Navy.
If you like giant monster movies, you’ll
want to see it. If you don’t get this genre, there’s nothing really new about
it to drag you in. Although, they’re a little coy with this movie: often we
just see the plates on Godzilla’s back or its tail, rather than a full view of
the monster.

Okay,
so what follows are spoilers, kind of. Instead of summarizing the plot, I’ll
make a few wry comments. As is typical with Godzilla
movies, the initial human interest scenes before any monster appears are rather
boring. Yes, they do need to set up the why behind what’s happening, but the
humans just are not interesting when you came to see a monster smash
skyscrapers.

I’ll
reveal that Godzilla fights two monsters, both of which reminded me of the
monster from Cloverfield. So the
makers of this movie can think of it as Godzilla
vs. Cloverfield.

The
marketing has been odd. The military speech in the trailer above does not occur
in the movie. And the scene at the end that reveals Godzilla wasn’t in the
movie either.

Also,
the second trailer above makes it look like the Statue of Liberty was damaged, which
made me wonder how Godzilla got into the Atlantic, but that turned out not to be
right. And I don’t remember the phone conversation between the husband and wife
that way. It was more like he simply told her to stay put (which didn’t turn
out to be the greatest idea).

Elizabeth
Olson (the older sister of the Olson twins) is rather striking. They do such intense
close ups, her eyes rival the size of the monster.

So
have fun with Godzilla Joins the Navy
or Godzilla vs. Cloverfield or Godzilla vs. Elizabeth Olson’s Eyes.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Last
week I attended a middle school play. Among other performances were eighth
graders who recited their own compositions on historical figures like Augustine
and Eleanor of Aquitaine. There were also recitations of Bible verses and Shakespearean
quotations. The main part of it was a play (really a series of mini-plays) on
the adventures of Robin Hood.

I
was having more difficulty with my new camera than I should have, so the only
presentable picture is this one, showing the hand-sewn costumes for some of the
female players.

Obviously,
this doesn’t do the costumes justice, and it’s the typical awkward sort of
picture that shows more of the background than the people. But this was a good
evening with all the students having to play their parts, acting out surprisingly
long lines of dialog by memory.

In
a previous entry, I showed the head of Covenant Christian Middle School, Sara Loudon, in period dress.

Supplement

Someone
took a much better picture. It’s so good, I suspect this was done during
rehearsal.

Click to enlarge

At
the play, it took me a few moments to realize the girl was Robin Hood and the
guy was Little John. Shrug.